The Calhoun Triangle

If you like to swim as I do, and enjoy "wild" water (as
opposed to swimming pools), Minneapolis is great. Zillions of city lakes
(land of ten thousand lakes, and all that), many with public beaches
(though I find "beach" an odd term for something the size, and often
the consistency, of a back-street roadhouse parking lot).

Being as the water is "wild," though, it's neither chlorinated nor
filtered, and it's out in the full glory of the summer sunshine,
so stuff grows in it.

Which is great for the anglers. Probably also for the fish. Not so
much for the swimmers. See, there's this stuff that's like the home
acquarium version of California kelp. Kelp is
great, if you're an otter. Or a snorkeler. Or a tourist at the
Monterey Bay Acquarium. Very picturesque. But swimming through
the miniature version, when it's had a really good summer's growth, is
just plain disgusting. It's like trying to pinwheel through tinsel,
except instead of hanging delicately from the boughs of a Christmas
tree, it's rooted firmly in the muck at the bottom of the lake. So, in
addition to being snagged like a trout in a net, it feels like there's
a whole concert stadium full of little
Gollum fingers, trailing along your body. And they need to trim their
damp, bendy little nails, too.

So, um, yuck.

In any event, this phenomenon is enough of a problem that, late in the summer, like any city anywhere, city services comes by and removes the
weeds. And they do this, I kid you not, by mowing the lake. With an
actual lake mower. That, you know, mows. Lakes.

It's an obvious thing, once you've seen it in action.
But little ol' me, growing
up in the semi-desert of the Colorado Front Range, I was kind of
boggled. Who knew?

ETA: I didn't realize this until the fine folks over at
Weeder's Digest asked me if I work for them,
but there is an actual company named Lake
Mower. However, they do not, so far as I can tell, carry anything
comparable to the EcoHarvester,
so I suspect that's why they
didn't turn up in my
initial Google search.